VIENNA – The health impact of last year’s Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan appears relatively small thanks partly to prompt evacuations, the chairman of a U.N. scientific body investigating the effects of radiation said on Tuesday.

The fact that some radioactive releases spread over the ocean instead of populated areas also contributed to limiting the consequences, said Wolfgang Weiss of the U.N. Scientific Committee on the effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR).

“As far as the doses we have seen from the screening of the population … they are very low,” Weiss told Reuters. This was partly “due to the rapid evacuation and this worked very well”.